What's New in Version 1.0

The following outlines the highlights of this debut version of Joomla! All comments are made in reference to Mambo 4.5.2.3 with regard to changes and improvements made.

Bug Fixes

Several crucial fixes have been applied to this version:

You can now properly login to different sites even if they share the same domain and are nested in sub-directories.

Slow queries in the User Manager have been corrected. This bug affected sites with thousands of registered users. Registered users (that don't have edit rights) are also excluded from the Author select list shown when editing content pages.

Variable references that caused notices in PHP 4.4 have been fixed.

Check the CHANGELOG.php file for more information.

Security Fixes

Several important vulnerabilities have been patched in this version:

Known vulnerabilities in the phpMailer class

SQL injection vulnerability via the user activation feature

SQL injection vulnerability via the polls component

Files such as the CHANGELOG have been converted to PHP files to prevent them being visible.

The "Email from Friend" form has been hardened to reduce the risk of it being used as a gateway for spam

The mosGetParam has been hardened by using phpInputFilter for NO_HTML mode

An alternative version of globals.php has been provided. If you rename globals.php-off to globals.php Joomla! will emulate the php setting register_globals=off. This affords some protection against certainly types of malicious attacks but may prevent some third party applications from working correctly.

Joomla! Site (Front End)

The site is now visibile to Administrators even when the site is in Offline mode.

Frontend Users can select the WYSIWYG editor they want to use rather than having to use the default.

Joomla! Administrator (Back End)

The System Information link has been added back to the System Menu.

"Force Logout" in the User Manager toolbar has been renamed to simply "Logout".

Users can select the WYSIWYG editor they want to use rather than having to use the default.

Contact component: added parameter to define a certain category for a contact menu.

Templates

The Solar Flare 2 template has been freshened with the new name. Andy Miller joined forces with Robert Deutz to deliver a stunning new Adminstrator Template for Joomla!

Toolbar icons in the Administrator toolbar are now shown in full colour rather than greyed out (which would normally indicate they were unavailable).

Miscellaneous Bits

A "check again" button has been added to the first page of the web installer.

Support for MySQL 4.1.x

Joomla! will support installation and use with PHP 5 and MySQL 4.1. An alternative database file is provided in the /includes directory. SImply copy database.mysqli.php over the existing databased.php file. Following this you can use the web installer normally to install Joomla!.

Library Upgrades

The following developer libraries have been upgraded:

patTemplate (this version now supports the short tag modifiers)

Overlib

TinyMCE

Walter Zorn tooltips

JSCookMenu

DOMIT!

DOMIT! RSS

Useability and Accessibility

A huge thrust is being made to make Joomla! compliant with web standards for useability and accessibility. While much more will be done in future versions, the following first steps have been taken to achieve this goal:

Paramater files can now use the root element <mosparams>. This enables you to have more than one XML params file in your component installation files.

A number of new mambot triggers have been included: onStart, onAfterMainframe

A number of new toolbar icons have been added

The mosToolBar::help method now correctly supports local help files in a components /help folder.

mosDBTable::isCheckedOut method has been added

CSS styles have been added to the administrator template to support Joomla! 1.5-like (Mambo 4.5.3-like) screen layouts.

The dTree javascript tree library has been added

database:setQuery now takes arguments for query limit offset and number of records to be returned.

Compatibility

We have made every effort to make this version backwardly compatible with Mambo 4.5.2.3 but there are a few changes that may affect a small selection of existing addons. If you are a developer of Mambo addons (and soon to be Joomla! developer) then your attention should be drawn to the following points:

patTemplate::createTemplate arguments have changed

database:setQuery arguments have changed but this is unlikely to affect most sites